La Belle électrique is a concert hall for electronic music… it is quite an unusual typology, isnt’t it? (Isabel Hérault) Electronic music is a new subject for architecture.

Most of the times electro nights take place in spaces that were not specially designed for them: clubs or night clubs, warehouses, fields, stadiums… For the Grenoble project, the aim was to invent a specific architectural system for a new type of spectacle and relationship with the public, whilst allowing concerts with a more traditional configuration. Which are the most relevant differences respect to a concert hall for classical music? First the acoustics is specific, it has to be very absorbing due to the high sound level, without reflective surfaces, and needs a particular device for the low frequencies. And of course a techno music night is dramatically different than a classical concert, where the public is quietly seated to listen the orchestra. La Belle Electrique has very few seats, it is more like a club, where people come to have fun, dance and get some drinks. The concert hall allows several configurations, the artists can play on the stage or install a podium in the centre, with the public around. The public can move, go to the bar or outside the hall to take a break.

Where is the building located? What is the relationship between the building and the surrounding environment? The building is located in Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps. The site is a former industrial district today undergoing total mutation. The hall is built next to the Magasin, the Centre for Contemporary Art, installed in a hall built by the Eiffel workshops at the end of the 19th century. In this context the project is a volume with five branches that gives equal importance to each of its sides. This multidirectional and autonomous shape frees itself from future developments, and there is no risk of its identity being weakened in the future.

Which are the design key points of the project? We designed a series of 3 concert halls, one after the other: le Métaphone (Oignies, North of France), la Belle Electrique and The Evreux Concert Hall. These 3 projects, very different in shape and materiality, have in common an exterior space that extends the interior – an urban loggia which is a «mise en abyme» of the idea of stage. The loggias, open toward the city, express the transmission of sound, emitted or received. These transition spaces can also be used for outdoor shows. At la Belle Electrique, the entrance pavilions form two urban stage scenes. They are raised and the audience thus becomes part of a stage performance inside these frames and actors of the urban spectacle, blurring the classical distinction between actor and spectator.

How is the internal space organized? The space is conceived so that during the concert each spectator can move and shift ambience as he/she pleases. The hall is designed like an asymmetric shell giving artists total freedom to use the space anyway they wish. Several platforms at different heights are provided for the DJs. Extending out from the hall, the “chill-out” is a calmer space, extended by balconies where people can go out to get some fresh air or smoke a cigarette during the concert. The backstage rooms- changing rooms for artists, offices, technical rooms, garage for tour buses- are arranged around the hall, strictly separated from the public spaces. The whole forms an organism with the concert hall as its heart. From this heart, the other spaces are organized. Which materials did you use? The architecture is rough and efficient, enveloped in a skin made of thick larch boards set at irregular intervals. The appearance of this timber gives the architecture a character that is part archetype, part hyper-modernity. This first layer allows a glimpse into the more mysterious world of the interior. The architecture plays with the opposition between the wooden abstract and rough envelope and the façade of the hall, light and transparent suspended curved glass curtain wall. Its curved plan gives the interior volume an organic aspect, reinforcing the contrast between the envelope and the body caught inside.